Free Tell No Lies by Gregg Hurwitz

for a match.”
    The rest is gone. Noise and wind in his ears, an arctic whiteout.
    Later, at home, in a frenzy of anxiety, he makes the mistake of consulting the Internet. Fever. Air hunger. Bloodstained sputum. People gurgling to asphyxiation, drowning in their own fluids.
    Waiting is an impossibility. Cris retreats into herself, but he does what he does best, which is tackle an insurmountable problem head-on. Sublimating all his rage and terror into seventy-two hours of phone calls and referrals, he manages to get her into a closed trial at UCSF, phase one of an experimental brachytherapy where radiation seeds are implanted inside the tumor to shrink it. Combined with high-dose rate and external-beam radiation therapy, it’s still a Hail Mary pass, but it’s the fourth quarter, the clock is running, and they have no time-outs left.
    At the intake session before the trial begins, they find themselves alone in the CT scan room for a few austere moments. The tech has left to make adjustments to his adjustments, and Cris lies on the floating table, her skin papery, her lips chapped, the scanner looming over her like a giant Life Saver.
    Her eyes flash up, showing a lot of white, to take in the imposing machine. “My own proscenium arch.” She does jazz hands out to a top-hat-waggling ta- da. The comic effect, horizontal, is compounded.
    He rests a hand on her arm. “Ready for the coming attraction?”
    “It feels like I’m already in the morgue,” she says, and tears spill sideways down her temples.
    He smooths her hair back from her forehead, kisses her dry lips. They have been together less than two years, and maybe this is what they will have.
    She is crying freely, finally, reality dawning. “I’m only thirty-three,” she says. “That’s not even supposed to be half a life.”
    He is regretting every lost moment, every cross word, every stupid argument. And then he hears himself saying, “When we’re through this, we’ll do it all differently. Not a second taken for granted. We’ll only do things that matter, that we love doing.”
    She squeezes his hand, presses it to her besieged heart. “I hope we get to,” she says.
    Her words almost buckle the knees right out from under him. When he finds his voice, a request springs out. “Marry me.”
    A sea change comes over her. She laughs, bites her lip, swimming in delight. “When?”
    “Tonight. In the hospital chapel.”
    “You’re crazy.” Her grin turns sly. “Evelyn will lose her mind.”
    When he calls his mother two hours later outside the tiny chapel, she abstains. “I am not going to come to a wedding at a hospital. ”
    The next day, sitting on the same pair of chairs in a different office, they feel the pinch of metal around their ring fingers when they hold hands. They glance at each other, share a private smile.
    “… minimally invasive,” the cardiac surgeon is saying. “The seeds will be implanted through hollow needles. You can expect some soreness, and the radiation will carry its own side effects. Nausea, fatigue, weight loss, and…” A glance at her file and a flicker passes across his face.
    Cris is still smiling across at Daniel, but he notes the doctor’s expression and stiffens in his chair. “What?”
    “I’m afraid you’ll lose the baby.”
    Cris’s eyes go shiny—an instant gloss of tears. She blinks, and they spill.
    “What baby?” she says.
    *   *   *
    “And we are open to a carpet allowance should you decide to change the color.”
    Daniel came back to himself there on the twenty-third floor in the empty office. The Realtor, it seemed, had not stopped for breath. He takes a moment to shed the memory, to let her words register.
    “A … carpet allowance?” After contending with paper-clip shortages and expense-clearance forms for photocopies, the notion seemed extraterrestrial. He couldn’t deny the pang of uncertainty. He’d lived this cushioned life before and found it wanting. He’d worked in a